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Do You Have a Pen: Michigan

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I wrote another book, but it's about travel this time! This one is pretty big, actually, with close to 60 chapters. The book, Do You Have a Pen: My Time Spent on the Road, on the Rails, and in the Air, can be pre ordered or, depending on when you see this, purchased by clicking the link HERE. A new chapter will post daily and then the book will be available for immediate purchase.

I also released the rough drafts of the book chapter by chapter on my website and you can read what I wrote and get the gist of the chapters. Honestly, you don’t even need to read the book. There is enough information between the blog postings and the resources pages found HERE that the rest of the book might just be fluff.

With that said, the blog is a very first draft, mostly notes, of the final book. It’s out of order and a tad messy. This gives you a peek inside my writing process where I do the technical, eclectic part first and the voice tends to change depending on the topic I am discussing and the research I did for the chapter. Paraphrasing from common knowledge sources in the first draft gives it that eclectic look and feel. So please, enjoy my scattered brain and typos in this draft of Do You Have a Pen: My Time Spent on the Road, on the Rails, and in the Air.

The book itself its a much easier format to read plus adds a lot more of me into it as it goes on with real world, easy to grasp examples where I could put them and honestly, I would truly appreciate your purchase.

Michigan

State flag of Michigan.
State flag of Michigan.

Michigan is almost as hard to talk about for me as Indiana since I live only three miles South of the state lined I am head up there frequently,  but there are some personally notable highlights from Michigan. 

One of my more somber experiences while traveling was visiting the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum and their memorial to the Edmond Fitzgerald in Paradise,  Michigan on Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula.  On November 10,  1975 twenty-nine souls were lost in what is considered one of the worst loses of cargo and crew in the American Great Lakes.  The museum has artifacts of the disaster and I remember walking around it in a solemn quietness.  I couldn’t speak.  It was a beautiful reminder of tragedy and the description of the disaster was so poignant that you felt as if you knew the sailors personally.  After I got home from there I was telling my father about it.  He sort of put his head down for a moment and told me more about it from his perspective.  He worked at Bethlehem Steel in Burns Harbor,  Indiana  (which is where he retired from after thirty-two years of dedicated service).  Though he didn’t know the crew members personally,  a few of the guys he worked with did know them and they had just left the steel mill and were making their way around the Lakes.  Bethlehem Steel,  according to my father,  was their last stop before all lives were lost,  however history show some more stop.  It’s important not to miss the importance of an event like this through the minutia of rather unimportant details like who’s stop was last or second from the last.  This was a horrific event and when you hear the Gordon Lightfoot song,  “Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald,”  playing in the background lightly while touring the artifacts and replicas in the museum,  it’s hard not to get misty-eyed. 

Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island  (both pronounced the same and closer to how the former is spelled)  are an awesome place to visit.  Mackinaw City is actually a village,  which is rather obvious when you are there and defiantly not a city by any definition of the word.  It’s a small outcropping point into the water and a circular road with low to mid-level hotels and motels around the perimeter and a few chain-like and theme restaurant.  I actually liked the area.  They have boats within walking distance from most hotels near the water to take you to Mackinac Island.  The boat ride is about forty-five minutes and is as impersonal as any other ferry anywhere else in the country.  When you dock,  it’s a whole new world—a beautiful world.  High end restaurants,  great tourist shops without the  “made in China”  label on the stuff they are selling,  golf,  and hotels.  I loved it there.  The one noticeable exclusion is cars.  Motorized vehicles are mostly prohibited except the garbage man and construction trucks.  Everyone else takes a horse and buggy,  rickshaw,  or rides a bicycle.  I hadn’t ridden a bicycle in twenty-five years at that point so I rented one,  the guy adjusted it for me,  and I was off—and if not for some quick thinking pedestrians,  I would have run over some people.  Yes,  you can forget how to ride a bike.  I got off the thing no more than fifty feet away from the rental place and walked it back so I could upgrade—to a tricycle.  My next problem was that I have never ridden anything like that with gears.  Growing up I just had a single-speed bicycle.  Riding around the island is about seven or eight miles.  It seemed like a good idea in the beginning and I remember proudly proclaiming to my partner that we had to be nearly done with the trek;  we were at the second mile marker.  That ride was miserable.  I was in the wrong gear most of the time and by the time we turned them in,  I thought and mostly looked as if I was having a heart attack.  I was famished and I was not riding a bike again.  I walked the tricycle the last two miles.  The ligaments in my knees hurt so bad half way through that I went to walk down a slight sand dune to the water’s edge and my knees buckled inward and I fell straight on my ass.  It was as painful as it was embarrassing.  Eventually I got up and that’s when I simply had to walk it.  I was truly thankful that the hotel I was staying in had a hot tub to try relaxing my muscles after that ordeal.  It helped a little.

It is my dream to have a vacation home in the Saugatuk and Douglas area.  Growing up,  my parents and maternal grandparents shared a place on the riverfront in Douglas,  Michigan and it was some of my earliest memories.  It’s grown a lot since the 1970’s.  Saugatuk is the larger of the two towns and a tourist and vacationer’s sanctuary.  Outlet stores,  breweries,  hotels,  boats,  and all the other cool stuff a resort town has are right there and easy access.  Many restaurants have docks where people can just cruise in on the water and have dinner then walk the downtown area.  I truly love it there and recommend it to the masses.  Rooms aren’t cheap there,  but you get exactly what you’re paying for,  relaxation and an escape. 

St.  Joseph,  Michigan is a nice quasi-resort area as well and as a source of good fortune,  has a Big Boy restaurant.  I love historic downtown areas and St.  Joe has one of the best I’ve seen anywhere in the country.  How do you know if a downtown area is of high quality?  They have a Kilwin’s Frozen Yogurt shop.  It’s near the lakefront of Lake Michigan and elevated.  You can walk down from the downtown area to the beach,  but it’s a hell of a walk back up those steps.  The downtown has the little somethings you didn’t know you needed from an antique shop till you saw it and it’s great for that and much more.  Every downtown amenity is there with unlimited parking time and roving information people giving people directions and suggestions of things to do. 

One city I really want to explore more is Grand Rapids.  It’s more of the same,  but inland with a navigable river in town,  but not much beyond.  It’s also a college town on top of the the other cool amenities so I really want to spend a weekend there and just soak it all in.

I see Michigan as a vacation place,  not a place I’d live because growing up it was the place you went on weekends to get wine,  antiques,  or produce.  I love it in the summer,  but it gets even more bitter cold in the winter than Indiana does.

Thank you for reading this little piece of Do You Have a Pen: My Time Spent on the Road, on the Rails, and in the Air. If you received any value from what you read, I ask you to please consider purchasing this book by clicking HERE. Thank you for everything!

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